The Master of the Rolls in Ireland was a senior judicial office in the
Irish Chancery under English and British rule, and was equivalent to the
Master of the Rolls
The Keeper or Master of the Rolls and Records of the Chancery of England, known as the Master of the Rolls, is the President of the Civil Division of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales and Head of Civil Justice. As a judge, the Master of ...
in the
English Chancery. Originally called the Keeper of the Rolls, he was responsible for the safekeeping of the Chancery records such as
close rolls and
patent rolls. The office was created by
letters patent
Letters patent ( la, litterae patentes) ( always in the plural) are a type of legal instrument in the form of a published written order issued by a monarch, president or other head of state, generally granting an office, right, monopoly, t ...
in 1333, the first holder of the office being
Edmund de Grimsby. As the Irish bureaucracy expanded, the duties of the Master of the Rolls came to be performed by subordinates and the position became a
sinecure which was awarded to political allies of the
Dublin Castle administration. In the nineteenth century, it became a senior judicial appointment, ranking second within the Court of Chancery behind the
Lord Chancellor of Ireland. The post was abolished by the
Courts of Justice Act 1924, passed by the
Irish Free State
The Irish Free State ( ga, Saorstát Éireann, , ; 6 December 192229 December 1937) was a State (polity), state established in December 1922 under the Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 1921. The treaty ended the three-year Irish War of Independ ...
established in 1922.
History of the Office
Until the sixteenth century, the Master of the Rolls was always a clergyman. The office in its early centuries was closely associated with
St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin: several medieval Masters of the Rolls served as either